Now 'struth as I remember it..... and being in possession of the physically younger of our two brains... I believe myself. Then again I could be delusional.

It was the Coast Range, summer of 1988. We were spozed to fly from Campbell River to an unnamed beach in Bute Inlet( Its a Bute ) near where the Southgate River flows into the sea, hike from the kelp beds, John Clarke/John Baldwin style to the col between Superb and Sir Frances Drake. There were some fine plums to pick.

It stormed. Big surprise. To quote the aforementioned (and sadly now passed) John Clarke " The Coast Range is rugged, remote and very very wet " . Yes it is. It really really is. Despite being high summer it rained for a couple of days.

So we hung out in Campbell River twiddling our thumbs and getting bored and burning through our days. And hung. And then we got a small break in the weather. Down a few days, we decided to chopper in rather then fly fixed-wing. In this way we would make up the days lost to storm.
It also meant we didn't have to do The Unholy Mother of All Thrashes - which is what the kelp beds to tree line entails. And the last detail - We were spared about 4,000' vertical in just a few miles.

And then again we weren't, for after a magnificent flight by the Swiss pilot Reto right to the col and toeing in to the big scree on one side and us tumbling out the doors and onto the skids, commando style , it closed back in again for a couple of more days. As tho to tell us we had been bad children for missing the Thrash of Many Shrubs Bushes And Trees.

And poor, poor Nikki.

Nikki, one of the five on the trip, had eaten some chicken à la bacteria during our wait in Campbell River and, as we hunkered down in our polyester fortresses, she had to make regular forays into the blowing rain for Major Nastiness.

Meanwhile, I shared a tent with Don S and the Ghost, David. I was the youngest and held the tent position most downstream. I had a spanky new sleeping bag made of fibrefil. It was soaking wet on the outside but miraculously dry within. Our possessions bobbed around us in the lake inside the tent ( not that there was much space for this bobbing what with the three of us crammed in there ). Using my trusty 2-cup cup I kept bailing the lake so we didn't truely live in a lake.

Now the entire point of the story was the utterly fantastic red underwear. I imagine your own imaginations have now run rampant - hoping for some wild antics with two fellas and a girl and some vibrant red lacy peek-a-boo garment meant for one gender but worn by another. Then again you know it was a raging summer storm and, despite being tentbound and running out of subjects to talk about we didn't turn to playing semi-erotic games like "worms". Nor did someone magically produce a pair of Victoria's Secret specials with pulleys and cleats and interesting rigging we could, uhhh, play with.

No, I believe the excitement generated by David's Most Famous Red Underwear simply was that eventually the storm clouds parted, summer sunshine shone ....and David had something DRY to wear and this item of clothing was a pair of red mysteryfabric longjohns.

Part two of this story is, of course, the terrifying flight we had out of the inlet after we hiked down to the logging camp but that is thread drift. This story was about David's wonderful red longjohns which were...............dry.

It was David's underwear. And I wasn't about to try'em on ( after four days of inclement weather a gonchie-swap isn't quite what cranks my tractor )

ANd, gratefully, David didn't have his camera with him the night I was jumping on the trampoline. There were no knickers at all that night but minus 10 degrees C and a trampoline covered in snow and a hot tub with a whisky bottle floatin' 'round innit to jump into after the trampolinin' had been done.

Oh, I have those. But as long as Tami keeps up her payments they won't appear here. (Actually, I think one of them did appear in Climbing twelve or fifteen years ago...)

As to her story, well, what you've got to remember is that it is her story. Which isn't to say that parts of it might not be true.

I'll try to find some of the pictures -- no, not those pictures -- and post them in the next few days because, underwear and wetness and such aside, it was a mighty fine trip. The summit of Mt. Sir Frances Drake may be the finest viewpoint in the entire coast range. The view is more or less straight down 9,000 ft to Bute Inlet, then straight back up 13,000+ ft to the summit of Mt. Waddington.

Well, it's maybe a little out of place. And I was planning to add it to the "Climbing at Squamish in the 1970s" thread, as another people photo. But here is Ghost, all ready for nighty night, on the northeast buttress of Slesse in 1982. Apparently committing heresy, or at least un-Canadian behaviour, in that his undies are blue, not red. Some sort of political statement, probably.

Canadians and their Stanfields have a long history. Stanfields as in Stanfield's underwear, a large manufacturer once based in Nova Scotia. Flannel long johns. Red flannel long johns. Monty Python's lumberjacks. And all sorts of other unmentionables - part of the Canadian psyche. If you let us get away with it, we'll take over SuperTopo with discussions of the relative merits of various styles and brands.

It should not surprise any of you to learn that Robert Stanfield was premier of Nova Scotia during the 1960s, and leader of the federal Conservatives from 1968 - 76. One of the better prime ministers that Canada never had, though he came very close in 1972. A nice, witty fellow - and the owner of Stanfield's underwear. The US elects presidents with robber baron parents (Kennedy). We elect underwear kings.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stanfield

Now Anders, be careful of political hijacks. The Yanx did that the last few months and we thumbed our noses and blew raspberries. I daresay a few folks would like to see our GG, Michaelle Jean, in her red scanties....which qualifies as NOT thread drift but inserts a political , uh, bend into things...

Digressions aside, lets get back on topic which is David's red underwear. Yes I bet they were Stanfields.

I preferred the union-suit tho' they were cotton. Wore those treeplanting. Out in the Coast Range I had those polypro Stink-A-Lots which collected and amplified the most bilious of vile smells that after only a coupl'a hours wear could gag a wolverine.

If we post a bunch of pictures of Canadians in underwear we'll probably get banned. Especially if it's red underwear. Though given the thread title, it was a bit disappointing that none have been posted so far.

Sarah Palin may not know much, but I bet she knows a thing or two about long underwear.

Ok, then, here's one Canadian in his underwear, surrounded by folks from "the colonies"...

We'd been tag teamin' a party of two up the East Ridge of Logan in '95. Plenty of jokes about claiming campsites in the name of this and that. Beat up by storms pretty good, for a good number of days.

Somewheres around day 20 or so, one of the Canadian kids (worked for MEC I seem to recall) stripped down in the sunlight of the first nice weather we'd had in a long spell. Then we all stripped down to our one piece underwear suits. Only to discover that they all were pretty much the same style and color. Got a laugh.

Lone Canook just left of center (and photo taken by his partner).

A few more days of joking about Doug and Bob McKenzie and the weather turned south and our new found friends from the north country bailed, while we of bigger packs (and more food and fuel) struggled on...

I think I still have the note they left on a wand for us somewheres...

Anyhoo, that's the sum total of my pictures of Canadians in their underwear...uhh, unless I can find the shots of those two gals from the Isle of Lesbos in the loft of the Conrad Kain hut in the Bugaboos...

What's all this Coast Range b.s.?
The Coast Range is in Oregon/California
The Coast Mountains are in BC.
No one ever calls the Rocky Mountains the "Rocky Range" now, do they?

No, and no one ever calls BC's Coast Mountains the Coast Mountains, either. Whatever their technical name, they have always been known, and ever shall be known, as The Coast Range. (With optional emphasis on THE, to indicate their obvious superiority to the junkpiles in OR/CA)

I have right here in my hot little hand a copy of "A Climber's Guide to the COASTAL Ranges of British Columbia", written by Dick Culbert (and Glenn Woodsworth), and published in 1964/65. (Emphasis mine.) As both of them became professional geologists, and are mountaineers/explorers who named their fair share of things, and as Glenn was later on the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names, I'd guess they know a bit about toponymy. If they say "Coastal Ranges", good enough for me.

In fact, I have two copies - Roy G, a lurker, recently donated another to me. The first was from my father, so I'll keep it. The second may go to help the Access Society here with fundraising.

my good buddy Mike at the trailhead for the Bugaboos in 1993, on the way out.

As you might notice, he's only wearing his long underwear. This is after a night of rainfall of truly biblical proportions, which we had avoided by an early alpine start and a quick trip up and back from Bugaboo Spire. We hit the tent at about the same time the drizzle started. Snug and warm, we cooked dinner in the vestibule of the tent after which we surrendered to sleep.

Sometime during the night I realized that the tent floor was showing signs of buoyancy, the bit of rock we were camped on (with a layer of sand between us and the granite) had filled up, as it were.

We slept in and the next morning was sunny. "What should we climb today?" was answered by the first of a series of avalanches coming off the peaks. It had rained a lot, and the mountains were "out of condition."

So we decided to bail for the Tetons.

On our hike out, it was misty wet. Hey, this whole area is a "temperate rainforest." At some point, we were wet inside and out, and getting warm with the hiking and the loss of altitude. We decided to strip down to our synthetic underwear.

You can see it was somewhat of a muddy mess. We got down to the road head just as a Canadian family drove up, ma, pa, the kids... and the first thing they get to see is a couple of Yanks hiking out of the woods in nothing but their skivvies (should that be synthies?).

They were in the process of packing up and leaving in that picture, not having been there longer than 15 minutes. It seemed a long way to drive for such a short visit. I have always felt a twinge of guilt at the thought that our appearance might have offended them, they being Canadian would never have been inhospitable to us.